Written Language

Epics have their own narrative styles and there are many expressions
which consist of formulaic structures in them. From these expressions, elliptical words and epithets have been examined in terms of linguistics in this study. Elipsis are formed by deleting a part of a word, phrase or sentence and the remaining elements of the expression stand for the whole meaning of the structure. Examples of ellipsis given in this study belong to syntactic level. Elliptical words may lexicalize over time, depending on their use frequencies. Epithets are formulaic words that describe the heros or various creatures and objects in folkloric texts. Epithets are seen in Turkic epics widely and they are characteristic stylistic features of Tuvan epics as well. These formulaic expressions spesific to oral tradition may also lexicalize by formulization. Some epithets and elliptical structures in the epics analysed in this study are also found in the literary texts and thus, these words have a place in Tuvan dictioanries too. In this context, it is seen that these elements which arise from the vocabulary of epics are transferred to literary language too. Accordingly, our analysis is done comparatively between oral literature and literary language.
Keywords: Tuvan language, Tuvan epics, ellipsis, epithet, vocabulary,
lexicalization.

Link: https://www.grao.com/es/producto/escriptura-i-perspectiva-ar07380315

En escriure sobre textos històrics, pot ser profitós manejar fonts diverses. Això invita a mirar el contingut dels orígens de la informació trobada des d’una perspectiva que introdueix la complexitat i que obliga a pensar, cosa que implica formular lingüísticament el que es pensa. D’aquí a la reflexió metalingüística sobre el text i sobre la situació comunicativa només hi ha un pas. Mostrarem de quina manera això s’esdevé a partir de l’experimentació amb una seqüència didàctica en una aula de quart d’ESO.

Уникальные древнетюркские памятники стали доступны каждому, в то время как оригинал остался на месте. Наличие точных копий стел дает возможность сделать необходимое количество полных отливок или любого фрагмента поверхности с надписями.  Все вышесказанное по воспроизведению Орхонских стел в полной мере относится  к любому другому памятнику из камня, который должен быть сохранен  «in situ», будь то изваяние, кулпытас или наскальное изображение.

El estudio de la gramática está presente en muchas disciplinas centradas en las lenguas humanas, desde la lingüística teórica hasta la didáctica de las lenguas; sin embargo, los conceptos gramaticales se dan muchas veces por supuestos sin plantear su naturaleza, origen y desarrollo. Este libro analiza estas cuestiones de una manera accesible. Es una exposición elemental de los fundamentos básicos de los principales conceptos gramaticales, que puede ser útil para los cursos de introducción a la gramática, a la lingüística, a la metodología lingüística o a los estudios filológicos en general. Al ser didáctica y autocontenida (hay un glosario final donde se definen y ejemplifican todos los conceptos utilizados) puede ser aprovechada también por estudiantes y especialistas en diversas materias humanísticas que implican de una u otra forma el lenguaje y las lenguas humanas tales como la filosofía, la lógica, la psicología, la neurología, la antropología, la sociología, la traductología o las ciencias de la computación.

Common patterns of interactions are altered in the digital world and new patterns of communication have emerged, challenging previous notions of what communication actually is in the contemporary age. Online configurations of interaction, such as video chats, blogging, and social networking practices demand profound rethinking of the categories of linguistic analysis, given the blurring of traditional distinctions between oral and written discourse in digital texts. This volume reconsiders underlying linguistic and semiotic frameworks of analysis of spoken and written discourse in the light of the new paradigms of online communication, in keeping with a multimodal corpus linguistics theoretical framework.

Typical modes of online interaction encompass speech, writing, gesture, movement, gaze, and social distance. This is nothing new, but here Sindoni asserts that all these modes are integrated in unprecedented ways, enacting new interactional patterns and new systems of interpretation among web users. These "non verbal" modes have been sidelined by mainstream linguistics, whereas accounting for the complexity of new genres and making sense of their educational impact is high on this volume’ s agenda. Sindoni analyzes other new phenomena, ranging from the intimate sphere (i.e. video chats, personal blogs or journals on social networking websites) to the public arena (i.e. global-scale transmission of information and knowledge in public blogs or media-sharing communities), shedding light on the rapidly changing global web scenario.

Το θέμα της εργασίας είναι η προφορικότητα στον γραπτό λόγο μαθητών του Δημοτικού Σχολείου. Η προφορικότητα έχει ποικίλα στοιχεία-χαρακτηριστικά γνωρίσματα που, εκτός από τον προφορικό λόγο, είναι δυνατόν σε διάφορες περιπτώσεις να εντοπιστούν και σε γραπτά κείμενα. Ο προφορικός λόγος προϋπήρχε του γραπτού. Είναι γνωστό ότι ένας μικρός αριθμός ανθρώπινων γλωσσών γνώρισαν τη γραφή και ότι οι πρώτοι άνθρωποι δε γνώριζαν τη γραφή. Ο προφορικός λόγος υπήρξε και υπάρχει τις περισσότερες φορές χωρίς τη γραφή ενώ, αντίθετα, η γραφή ποτέ χωρίς τον προφορικό λόγο. Εύκολα γίνεται λοιπόν κατανοητό πόσο σημαντικός υπήρξε ο προφορικός λόγος -και η προφορικότητα- για τον άνθρωπο διαχρονικά. Από τα παραπάνω συνάγεται ότι ο προφορικός λόγος είναι «ζωντανός», συνεχώς εξελισσόμενος και «πανταχού παρών» στην ανθρώπινη ζωή. Για τον λόγο αυτό, μία εργασία που μελετά στοιχεία προφορικότητας στον γραπτό λόγο των παιδιών, δεν μπορεί παρά να εξετάζει την «συνύπαρξή» του προφορικού λόγου με τον γραπτό, μέσα στα κείμενα που κατασκευάζουν τα ίδια τα παιδιά. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, η παρούσα εργασία εξετάζει το «πέρασμα» της προφορικότητας, δηλαδή στοιχείων του προφορικού λόγου, από το πεδίο της προφορικής επικοινωνίας στο πεδίο του γραπτού λόγου, δηλαδή στα γραπτά κείμενα των μαθητών και το κατά πόσο αυτά επηρεάζουν τη γενικότερη εικόνα του κειμένου τους.

Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be extended to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.

Preface and Introduction to the edited volume *The Tyranny of Writing: Ideologies of the Written Word* (eds. Constanze Weth & Kasper Juffermans), Bloomsbury (Advances in Sociolinguistics), 2018.

The book is an attempt to make sense of the written word and its powerful role in society. By using the word ‘tyranny’ we take an explicitly critical stance towards writing inspired above all by Saussure’s argument against writing as an object of linguistic research and what he called 'la tyrannie de la lettre'. He denounced writing as an imperfect, distorted image of speech that obscures our view of language and its structure. In this introduction to The Tyranny of Writing: Ideologies of the Written Word, we discuss the ‘tyranny of writing’ as a critical metaphor for sociolinguistics. The idea of the ‘tyranny of writing’ serves as a heuristic for exploring ideologies of language and literacy in culture and society as well as the tensions and contradictions between the written and the spoken word, linguistic normativity, creativity and authenticity, and centres and peripheries in language practices.

Writing is an eclectic phenomenon whose many facets are studied by the young interdisciplinary field of grapholinguistics. Linguistically, writing is a system of graphic marks that relate to language. Under the lens of processing, it is a method of producing and perceiving utterances with our hands, eyes, and brains. And from a communication theoretical and sociolinguistic perspective, it is an utterly personal medium that allows users not only to convey messages to others but also to associate themselves with cultures or ideologies. These perspectives must merge to become the foundation of a functional theory of grapholinguistics that aims not only to describe how writing systems are built but to explain why they are built that way. Starting with a unified framework that allows the description of all types of writing systems with comparative concepts (such as grapheme) and moving towards the incorporation of evidence from disciplines such as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to arrive at explanations, this book establishes the cornerstones of such a functional theory of writing. The Nature of Writing is a collection of ideas about writing, a status report about relevant research, a discovery of desiderata, and a new perspective. It is a start, but most importantly, it is an invitation.

Abbreviations as a communication phenomenon may be subcategorised into oral-born and written-born. The way in which the latter are integrated into the oral code, i.e. lexicalised, cannot be described and analysed only on the basis of elements and characteristics pertaining to the oral code, since they first appear in the written code. It is submitted that the lexicalisation of written-born abbreviations should be examined through the relationship of language and its writing system. The study of written-born abbreviations in Modern Hebrew shows that the choice between oralisation and letter-naming as possible lexicalisation procedures depends less on purely phonetic or phonologic data and more on phonographemic, graphophonemic and rarely semantic considerations. This analysis emphasises the role that writing plays in word formation and affirms one of the aspects of a more general linguistic theory the author defends: the influence of writing on language.

http://aleph.nli.org.il:80/F/?func=direct&doc_number=000448807&local_base=RMB01

http://www.livres-universitaires.com/Universite-302116-2708010948-Ecritures_abregees_notes_notules_messages_codes_labreviation_entre_pratique_spontanees_codifications_Labreviation_entre_pratique_spontanees_codifications_modernite_et_histoire.html

This chapter is dedicated to the relationship between spoken and written Galician, which will be discussed in two different parts: a first one that refers to historical aspects and a second one concentrating on the current differences and mutual influences between orality and writing. The chapter departs from some theoretical notions that allow for a clear distinction as to the medial difference between the spoken and the written code and the conceptual difference between what is generally associated with both: what Koch and Oesterreicher (2001) call the " language of immediacy " and the " language of distance ". The diachronic part will first discuss the emergence of a written variety in medieval Gali-cian and then trace the basic evolution of the Galician language with regards to the tension between oral and written communication. It will be shown how the history of modern written Galician (from the first texts of the so-called " pre-rexurdimento " onwards) is marked by a process of " diaphasic differentiation " (Kabatek 1997a): here, the selection of elements considered to be adequate for the written language and the " sorting out " of others as well as the stylistic differentiation and widening of a certain range of written varieties will be focused. Some remarks on the orthographic debates will open the second part. The remainder of the text will be dedicated to the relationship between the contemporary written and spoken standards and the respective non-standard varieties. Galician language, orality and literacy, spoken and written language, or-thography, Rexurdimento, medieval Galician, written code, diaphasic differentiation , language of immediacy, language of distance

Este libro es un trabajo conjunto que se planteó como un recurso de consulta ágil y agradable para que la comunidad académica resuelva dudas y mejore sus habilidades comunicativas en la lengua española. Contribuí a esta obra en dos capítulos: "Las cartas y los correos electrónicos" y "El verbo".

A characteristic of the written text is its permanency. 

Many people can read that text over a long time period and in many different ways. It can be analysed and deconstructed by the reader to present many varied interpretations, to further the interests of that reader. 

Similarly, the writer may want to create a false understanding of the text for the reader in order to persuade or bias the reader, possibly for financial or political gain.  The writer of non-fiction may want to enhance a lifeless description, to produce greater feeling and depth within the writing – to sell more books, or get revenge.

Misinformation or false facts in a written text, placed there by the writer, constitutes a special case of misunderstanding, as the facts may be wrong (intentionally or mistakenly) or out of context with the situation being written about. I have found that generally we can recognise these situations, by putting a name to these elements of misunderstanding, which we know well, if only by their effect on us. 

This paper will look at the elements used intentionally by the writer to deliberately change the meaning of what would normally be deduced from a text, when considering only the mechanics of reading.  This means deciphering each word and sentence from dictionary definitions, and constructing an interpretation, much like a foreign migrant would do, in interpreting a new language.

Of course, if the mechanisms used by writers to create a misunderstanding are known to the perceptive audience, then there is no longer a misunderstanding.

Speaking and writing are the most important communicative tools among human beings. While speaking is considered to be older and more widely employed, spoken and written language have not been treated equally. Spoken language is seen as the natural productive tool among people that is more common and normal, whereas written language is seen as being intricate and complicated due to its extensive rules. Therefore, spoken language has attracted the attention of researchers to a greater extent compared to written language due to the belief that spoken language has primacy over written language. This paper is an attempt to shed some light on these two communicative elements and the differences between them. A self-reflection, based on Dewey's (1997) groundbreaking work, is presented in terms of when/where spoken or written language is more appropriate as a medium of communication. It can be argued, therefore, that both speaking and writing are important means of communication without prioritising one over the other; yet, conventions are the real indicators as to which medium of communication is more appropriate.

Tutkimuksen aiheena on sanaston käyttö yliopisto-opiskelijoiden kirjoittamissa ranskankielisissä aineissa. Korpus koostuu 106:sta (2x53) kahdessa eri vaiheessa kootusta aineesta, ja 50:stä (2x25) kontrolliryhmän aineesta. Ensimmäisen vaiheen materiaali on koottu ennen koehenkilöiden osallistumista opiskelija-vaihtoon, joka ajoittuu vuosiin 1987-1993 ja oli lukukauden tai -vuoden mittainen. Kontrolliryhmän jäsenet eivät ole osallistuneet vaihtoon, mutta ovat suorittaneet muulla tavoin pakollisen ranskankielisessä maassa suoritettavan kieliharjoittelun. Toisen vaiheen materiaali on koottu samoin perustein oleskelun jälkeen. Tutkimus kuuluu soveltavan kielitieteen, tarkemmin interlingvatutkimuksen alaan. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää, miten ulkomaisessa yliopistossa oleskelu vaikuttaa sanaston oppimiseen ja miten tätä tietoa voidaan käyttää pedagogisesti hyväksi. Työ on luonteeltaan pääasiallisesti kvantitatiivinen, mutta kvalitatiivinen analyysi (mm. virheanalyysi) täydentää käytettyä menetelmää. Työn perushypoteeseinä ovat seuraavat olettamukset: 1) opiskelijavaihtoon perustuva oleskelu ulkomailla parantaa leksikaalisia kykyjä paremmin kuin muu oleskelu ulkomailla, 2) kirjallinen esitys tulee luonnollisemmksi mm. siksi, että ns. pragmaattisten organisaattoreiden käyttö lisääntyy ja 3) puhekielelle ominaiset piirteet ilmestyvät kirjoitettuun tekstiin.
Tutkimuksen teoriaosassa kartoitettiin interlingvaan eli välikieleen liittyviä olennaisia piirteitä sekä niiden suhdetta vieraan kielen opettamisen problematiikkaan. Tutkimuksessa keskityttiin virheiden, kommunikatiivisen ja metakommunikatiivisen kompetenssin sekä kehitystutkimuksen merkitykseen vieraan kielen oppimisessa ja opettamisessa. Lisäksi pohdittiin kirjoitetun ja suullisen kielen eroja, sillä viestikanavan valinta vaikuttaa olennaisesti viestin tuottamisprosessiin. Kvantitatiivista analyysiä varten määriteltiin keskeinen käsite sana ortografisen määritelmän mukaisesti, vaikka pedagogisesti ottaen olennaista on puhua leksikaalisesta yksiköstä. Materiaalianalyysissä apuna käytetty tietokoneohjelma WordCruncher vaikutti osaltaan sanan määrittelyyn. Lisäksi määriteltiin pragmaattiset organisaattorit, jotka vaikuttavat tekstin koherenssiin: tekstin segmentointi kappalejaon ja välimerkkien avulla sekä kielellisten ja tekstuaalisten merkkien käyttö.
Materiaalin analyysi perustui pääasiallisesti Moira Linnarudin käyttämään metodiin teoksessa Lexis in composition (1986), mutta sitä sovellettiin työn tarpeiden mukaisesti. Tutkitut kielellis-kvantitatiiviset tekijät olivat: sanojen määrä ainetta kohti, leksikaalinen variaatio, tiheys, yksilöllisyys ja vaikeusaste. Sanojen frekvenssejä tarkasteltiin verrattuna  Dictionnaire des fréquences ja Français fondamental teoksiin. Tilastollisesti tutkimustuloksia tarkkailtiin Pearsonin tulomomenttikertoimen, Spearmanin ja Kendallin järjestyskorrelaatioiden avulla, sekä t-testin ja ANOVA-testin avulla; laskelmissa käytettiin SPSS-tilasto-ohjelmaa.
Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että ryhmien välillä ei ollut tilastollisesti merkittävää eroa sanastoon liittyvissä kvantitatiivisissa laskelmissa, mutta kvalitatiivisessa analyysissä löytyy eroa koeryhmän hyväksi, mm. siten, että näiden opiskelijoiden käyttämien pragmaattisten organisaattoreiden valikoima on laajempi. Puhekielisiä piirteitä ilmestyy tekstiin, varsinkin niillä opiskelijoilla, jotka opiskelivat pidempään ulkomaisessa yliopistossa tai oleskelivat muuten pidempään ulkomailla. Erityisesti oleskelu ulkomailla paransi niiden opiskelijoiden sanaston tuntemusta, joiden lähtökielitaito oli alhaisempi. Yksilölliset erot ovat kylläkin merkittäviä. Yleisesti ottaen tekstuaaliset kyvyt paranevat ulkomailla oleskelun jälkeen. Koeryhmän opiskelijat osaavat käyttää myös kommunikatiivisia strategioita sanaston ja pragmaattisten organisaattoreiden valinnoissa saadakseen viestinsä perille. Sanaston ja tekstuaalisten kykyjen parantamiseksi opiskelijoita voidaan rohkaista lukemaan erilaisia tekstejä mielekkäällä tavalla, rohkaista käyttämään kommunikatiivisia strategioita ongelmatilanteissa sekä rohkaista opiskelijoita lähtemään opiskelijavaihtoon, jotta he saisivat hyvän kielipohjan tuleville opinnoille.

Asiasanat: interlingva; vieraan kielen oppiminen; ranskan kieli; sanasto; kirjoitettu kieli

This paper proposes a way in which the semantographic/ phonographic dichotomy recognised as fundamental in logographic (or morphosyllabic) writing systems in East Asia, the ancient Middle East, and Mesoamerica can be systematised to transcend the very different scholarly traditions in each region in order to allow valid and more meaningful cross-linguistic comparisons. A totally functional analysis with a focus on synchronic words as they occur in texts, rather than a focus on the form of signs or their etymology, ignores such formal units as the frame or even the grapheme and recognises three main compositional levels — logogram, component, and element — and the strict application of the analysis reveals cases of a fourth level, superlogogram. The application of this approach allows characterisations of writing systems that reflect the meaningful combination of signs in context and reveals greater complexity in how words are written, such as in semantic+semantic combinations, than previous analyses have recognised. It is concluded, however, that a statistical application of the analysis is prevented, not because of differences in the writing systems, but primarily because of the fundamental typological differences of the represented languages themselves.

All’interno della vasta tematica del rapporto scritto/parlato selezionerò un fenomeno specifico: i segnali discorsivi (SD).
Verranno inizialmente prese in considerazione le caratteristiche generali dei segnali discorsivi (eterogeneità categoriale, eliminabilità e particolarità distribuzionali,  particolarità prosodiche, variabilità sociolinguistiche, polifunzionalità e 'doppia polarità'); all'interno della loro riconosciuta ‘sensibilità contestuale’ verrà quindi adottata la nozione di ‘sinergie’ (proposta per le dimensioni dell'atto linguistico in generale in Bazzanella, Caffi, Sbisà (1991)).
L'analisi dei SD adotterà un approccio a prototipo, così da sottolineare il continuum più che la dicotomia del rapporto parlato/scritto, secondo una concezione ormai largamente condivisa, e resasi ancora più necessaria in relazione alle nuove tecnologie comunicative (come l'e-mail, o il chat-on-line).  Si individueranno alcune correlazioni tipologiche, sia 'globali', che 'locali', esemplificando infine rispetto ad alcuni specifici SD.

Continuing the dialogue between ‘comparative standardology’ and variation studies, this volume offers comparative data which allows us to delineate large groups of factors behind the standardisation process in manuscript cultures. The discussion in this chapter draws on the assumption that standardisation can be understood better if it is considered a non-unidirectional process. The groups of factors can thus be seen as channels or pathways of (de)standardisation. A comparative analysis of such pathways in the twelve manuscript cultures addressed in this volume permits us to postulate some generalisations, as follows.
Contact situations do not necessarily lead to the exchange of standardised orthographic principles. In many cultures, the co-existence of Standard Arabic and non-standardised languages spoken and written in Muslim communities poses a paradox: such languages are profoundly influenced by Arabic, but their orthographies are not modelled on the principle of standardisation. This apparent paradox is resolved by the prediction that standards in orthography – one of the domains of manuscript culture – are conceptually different from standards in other domains, such as format, layout and script. As there is a difference between the standardisation of spoken language and written language, there is also a difference between the standardisation of orthography and other domains of manuscript production. Thus, a general tendency observable at the level of physical features of manuscript production is that layout and script types tend to be unified, irrespective of orthographic norms and, vice versa, orthographic norms develop irrespective of norms applied to physical domains of manuscript production.

La puntuación es una parte integral de la lengua escrita, pero son pocas las investigaciones tratan de entender cómo aprenden los niños a usarla en sus escritos. Las aproximaciones al estudio de su aprendizaje suelen hacerse desde una perspectiva normativa. ¿Cómo llegan los niños a comprender los usos de la puntuación? ¿Qué funciones atribuyen a los signos? ¿Qué rol juegan las posibilidades de interpretación del texto en la construcción del conocimiento de la puntuación? ¿Hay alguna relación entre el léxico del texto y las hipótesis infantiles sobre la función de los signos de puntuación? Este estudio responde a estas preguntas de investigación.  Ciento veinte niños, entre 7 y 12 años,  que  cursaban la escolaridad primara puntuaron y luego reflexionaron sobre los signos apropiados para dos tipos de texto poco “escolarizados”: una historieta y una portada de revista infantil, ambos presentados sin puntuación en dos versiones, una con marcadores de modalidad y otra donde se suprimieron. Los resultados muestran una progresión evolutiva  que va de un uso de puntuación guiado por criterios gráficos hacia uno guiado por criterios textuales donde los marcadores de modalidad sirven a los niños para transitar del trabajo en el espacio gráfico hacia el trabajo sobre el espacio textual; de usar puntuación para marcar sus reacciones al contenido del texto a usar la puntuación para orientar la interpretación de otros lectores del mismo texto.

In this essay, I discuss the challenges of (engaging in) grapholinguistics, a young field that focuses on writing, a topic mostly marginalized in ‘mainstream’ linguistics to this day. Issues that are raised include the lack of writing-related classes in linguistic study programs, institutionalization (e.g. departments or chairs for grapholinguistics), and pertinent publication and presentation outlets. Furthermore, the essay highlights problems caused by the interdisciplinarity of grapholinguistics, including linguistic, theoretical, methodological, and terminological boundaries that must be crossed. These issues are partially addressed through a personal lens, i.e. my own ‘journey’ in the field thus far. This allows me to speak from (some) experience not only about the risks of focusing on a topic at the periphery of many disciplines and some of the setbacks this entails but also about my motivation behind proposing a (sketch of a) theory of writing in my PhD thesis that—based on linguistic Naturalness Theory—aims to offer a unified descriptive and explanatory framework for studying writing systems and writing in general. It also gives me a chance to argue that writing, which can be studied with many of the concepts firmly established in other fields of linguistics (as well as additional writing-specific concepts), is central to every language that is spoken, signed and written in literate language communities and should therefore be an integral rather than an optional part of linguistic theories and paradigms in general. Essentially, this essay highlights why doing research in grapholinguistics should be embraced rather than justified.

Il friulano, lingua minoritaria parlata nella regione Friuli Venezia Giulia, è una realtà piuttosto variegata e frammentata, fatta di diversi dialetti, con pronunce diverse e grafie diverse. Esiste tuttavia una koinè legalmente riconosciuta, utilizzata ufficialmente dalla Regione per bandi e atti pubblici.
Ma in che misura questa lingua franca viene effettivamente utilizzata dal 'friulano medio' che scrive sul web? Attraverso l'analisi di blog e pagine facebook scritte interamente in friulano da singoli individui e non da istituzioni pubbliche, l'articolo vuole provare a capire quanto la koinè venga utilizzata nella scrittura sul web, oppure quali varianti di friulano si possono riscontrare quando la koinè viene abbandonata.

"‘Asemic writing’ is defined by Tim Gaze as a collection of forms ‘which appears to be writing’, while ‘having no worded meaning’. Asemic forms may bear the hallmarks of writing, either through their shape or organization, but have no specific verbal signification. These signs are typically abstract, geometric glyphs, arranged in linear sequence so as to invite the act of reading, but that do not allow verbal interpretation. The relationship between literacy and asemic signs has been established historically, and many past examples of asemic writing (sometimes described as ‘pseudo-writing’) can be found in historical artefacts which convey a sense of status, power and exclusivity through asemic decoration.

Asemic language appears within images in Shaun Tan’s wordless picturebook, The Arrival (2006).  Tan uses this pseudo-writing to represent a generic foreign language, with the aim of showing a sense of alienation. These images demonstrate that language, when it is not understood, can be isolating. In other examples, asemic writing is used to convey a sense of otherness. Dylan Horricks (2014) uses shading within speech balloons to describe ‘words [that] were not understood by us’. Here, the use of a speech balloon signifies verbal communication, though no verbal meaning is present.

Numerous texts contain decipherable alien languages, painstakingly developed by linguists (such as Christine Schreyer’s Kryptonian). Such sign systems can be directly transliterated, offering the readers the challenge of deciphering messages. However, other comics, ranging from Peanuts to the X-Men, embrace asemisis. These present alien or animal languages that are never intended to contain decipherable messages, and instead convey a sense of otherness through the impossibility of understanding.

This paper will explore the motivations for featuring asemic signs in comics and graphic novels, focusing in particular on Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, and The X-Men, seeking to consider how meaning is achieved through meaninglessness in indecipherable symbols.
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The grapheme appears to be a central concept of grapholinguistics. However, there is no consensus on how it should be defined. Some use the concept of grapheme in their work but fail to give a definition while others altogether reject it. When the concept is defined, it is interpreted either as a written unit which refers to a phoneme (this is termed the referential view), or as a written unit that is lexically distinctive (analogical view), which is tested via written minimal pairs such as <house> and <mouse> analogously to phonological minimal pairs which can be used to discover phonemes. A problem of these two views is that they are restricted to alphabets. A universal conception of the grapheme inclusive of all types of writing systems would make possible the uniform description and, consequently, the comparison of diverse writing systems. Such a conception is proposed here: Graphemes are units of writing which are (1) lexically distinctive, (2) have linguistic value (mostly by referring to phonemes, syllables, morphemes, etc.), and are (3) minimal. These criteria are characterised in detail, and examples from writing systems such as Arabic, Chinese, Devanāgarī, German, Japanese, Korean, Tamil, and Thai highlight their cross-linguistic applicability.

The Medieval stratum of Hebrew corresponds to no spoken Hebrew, whence a certain loss of interest for Medieval Hebrew; a literary idiom, certainly, but not lacking linguistic consequences. A succinct survey of some effects of Medieval Hebrew on the vernaculars makes the case for a linguistic interest in this stratum of Hebrew and affirms the autonomous status of writing and its active role in the semiotic sphere, besides language.

La strate médiévale de l’hébreu ne correspond pas à de l’hébreu parlé, d’où un certain désintérêt pour l’hébreu médiéval ; c’est un idiome littéraire, certes, mais non sans retombées linguistiques. Un examen sommaire de quelques effets de l’hébreu médiéval sur les langues vernaculaires justifie l’intérêt linguistique pour cette strate et affirme le statut autonome de l’écriture et son rôle actif dans la sphère sémiotique, à côté de la langue.

Following a research study highlighting the potentials of peer review in university contexts, a group of researchers and teachers has verified the impact of this practice in elementary and secondary school contexts.
This article presents a case study that was carried out in an Italian language class in the fourth grade of an Italian primary school. Data analysis of the study indicated a few interesting points. First, the results of the study suggested that peer review could work in school contexts as effectively as it does in higher education. Second, the study highlighted some potential challenges that primary or secondary educators may face when integrating peer review in their classrooms. These challenges include time demanding of the peer review process and readiness of students. These emerged issues require an adjusted peer review model be used in school contexts.
The researchers would like to call for more research to examine the impact of peer review in school contexts

We’re all familiar with abbreviations in written English and other European languages—taking for granted such common conventions as Dr. (for Doctor) and POTUS (for President of the United States). These conventions are inherited from the Romans, who used them in written Latin on monuments, coins, and manuscripts more than two thousand years ago. Because the Germanic fuþark (runes) were borrowed from the Roman alphabet in the 2nd century AD, similar conventions can also be found on Viking rune stones and runic manuscripts. Furthermore, it seems that the Romans themselves inherited some of these conventions, for they have been documented in the c. 2000 BC Proto-Sinaïtic abjad: the ultimate ancestor of most modern alphabets, including our own. What is less well known is that very similar conventions can actually be found in many unrelated logophonetic writing systems, including Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mycenaean Linear B, and Aztec (Nahuatl) hieroglyphic writing.

Maya writing is no exception, and it clearly employed several distinct and complex abbreviational conventions. But there are significant challenges to the investigation of abbreviational conventions in a writing system that is still actively being deciphered. How do we identify abbreviations in Maya writing? That is, how do we know the difference between what is written and what is intended (to take up Miguel Civil's point)? And how do we distinguish intentional abbreviations from mere structural ‘lack of fit’ between a logosyllabic writing system and the language it records (to consider John Justeson's observation)? And, finally, what are the implications of these abbreviational strategies for the ongoing work of decipherment? Each of the workshop leaders has grappled with these questions in his own work, and we will attempt to answer them in a team-taught seminar-style workshop, turning from mini-lectures to guided hands-on work with the texts, to integrated discussions of our findings.

This chapter provides an overview of what literacy is and why it is important, along with some key questions designed to assess background knowledge related to literacy teaching and learning. At the end of the chapter, tips are provided to students and teacher educators for how to get the most from the textbook. A series of activities is also provided to deepen understanding of literacy and to facilitate planning for becoming an effective teacher of literacy.

Ashkenazic Hebrew is a unique language variety with a centuries-long history of written use among Central and Eastern European Jews. It has distinct phonological and grammatical features attested in texts composed by Ashkenazic Jews (e.g. adherents of the Hasidic and Maskilic movements) in Europe prior to the twentieth century. While Ashkenazic Hebrew is commonly believed to have been replaced by Israeli Hebrew in the twentieth century, this traditional written variety of the language actually continues to thrive in contemporary Diaspora Haredi (strictly Orthodox) communities, chiefly the Hasidic centres of New York, London, Montreal and Antwerp. This fascinating and understudied form of Hebrew is used widely and productively in the composition of a rich variety of original documents for a Hasidic audience (about e.g. Covid transmission, United States educational stipulations, Zoom schooling, lockdown rules, etc.). In this article we demonstrate that contemporary Ashkenazic Hebrew has many shared orthographic, phonological, grammatical and lexical features with its Eastern European antecedent. These include: orthography of loanwords based on Yiddish conventions (e.g. ‫הקאראנא‬ ‫חולי‬ xóylay ha-koróna 'those ill with coronavirus'); morphology of plural loan nouns ‫בקאלידזשעס(‬ be-kóleǧes 'in colleges', ‫הפראגראמע״ן‬ haprográmen 'the programmes'); retention of the definite article with inseparable prepositions ‫בהשכונה(‬ be-ha-šxíne 'in the neighbourhood');

A l’escola, una de les tasques més habituals a l’hora de parlar d’un tema és escriure una redacció o presentar una exposició oral. Tot i això, aquestes dues activitats gairebé sempre són exclusives: o es fa oralment o es fa per escrit, però no és habitual fer la mateixa activitat en les dues modalitats de producció; sembla com si posar per escrit una exposició que ja ha estat presentada oralment o exposar oralment un text escrit no aportés res de nou a l’aprenentatge dels nens. És per això que en aquest treball volem estudiar les diferències observables entre els textos que s’han fet primer de manera oral i després per escrit, i a la inversa; per a veure de quina manera influeix l’ordre de la modalitat de producció en la qualitat dels textos resultants: quins són més llargs? Quins tenen un lèxic més ric i variat? En definitiva, volem esbrinar quins textos són millors, els que s’han fet primer oralment i després per escrit, o els que s’han produït primer per escrit i després s’han exposat oralment.
El corpus utilitzat per al present estudi està format per textos produïts per parlants de català com a primera llengua que realitzen quatre tipus de textos en diferents ordres de realització, segons el gènere discursiu i la modalitat de producció: expositiu oral, expositiu escrit, narratiu oral i narratiu escrit. Les característiques que estudiem són la diversitat lèxica, que és el percentatge de paraules diferents sobre el total de paraules d’un text; la llargada mitjana de paraula, mesura que permet veure si les paraules usades són morfològicament simples o complexes, i la densitat lèxica, és a dir, la proporció entre les paraules lèxiques (noms, adjectius, verbs...) i les funcionals (determinants, preposicions, pronoms...). Un cop comparades aquestes característiques dels textos, discutim quin ordre de modalitat de producció influeix positivament en els textos resultants, per així donar pistes als docents sobre com els nens poden millorar les seves habilitats discursives.
[One of the most common tasks when talking about a topic at school is to write an essay or to make an oral presentation. However, these two activities are almost always exclusive: either they are done as a speaking task or they are done as a writing task. It is not usual to do the same activity in the two modalities of production, it seems as if to write a presentation that has already been presented orally or to present orally a written text brings nothing new to children’s learning. That is the reason why in this paper we study the observable differences between the texts that have been done first orally and then have been written, and vice versa, to see how the modality of production order may affect the quality of the resulting texts: Which are the longest ones? Which have a richer and more varied vocabulary? In sum, we want to find out which texts are better: the ones that have been done first orally and then have been written, or those that have been done first in writing and then have been orally exposed.
The corpus used for this study consists of a set of texts produced by bilingual Spanish/Catalan speakers that have Catalan as their home language. They produced four types of texts in different production orders, according to text genre and modality of production: spoken expository, written expository, spoken narrative, and written narrative. The characteristics studied are lexical diversity, which is the percentage of different words relative to the total words in a text; word length, that can show if the words used are morphologically simple or complex; and lexical density , i.e. the proportion of lexical words (names, adjectives, verbs...) and functional words (determiners, prepositions, pronouns...). Once these texts characteristics have been compared, we discuss which production order has a positive impact on the resulting texts, so as to give clues to teachers about how children can improve their discursive skills.]

The primacy of speech in second language learning and the relative lack of importance of the written form have triggered a continuous debate in the field of language teaching methodology. The various approaches which have been developed throughout the years emphasise the importance of the spoken language. Therefore, the written form has been taken for granted in most teaching methodologies. This paper considers the question of whether second language learners learn best through spoken or written language. It reviews the literature with regard to how speaking and writing have been taught in the last two decades. In addition, it describes the differences between spoken and written forms of languages. The paper then presents some characteristics and features of both language forms and states the situation of teaching English in a foreign language context. The paper concludes that both spoken and written aspects of any language are important in language learning and they both complement one another. Second language learners need to learn both aspects in order to master the language. The degree of exposure to spoken or written language is yet determined by the learners' purpose for learning the language. Keywords: English as a foreign language, language learning, spoken language, teaching methodologies, written language Cite as: Almutrafi, F. (2018 How learners of English learn best in a foreign language context? A glimpse of the debate over the written versus the spoken form. Arab World English Journal, 9 (1). DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol9no1.13